Resistance is Futile: Enemy Within
by Lifeweaver
Summary: Or, Everything You Wanted to Know About the Borg but Were Afraid to be Assimilated. I'd tell you to Read&Review, but I can't make you.


The Borg, like the rest of the Star Trek franchise, belong to someone else. If they were mine, Picard, Riker, and the rest of the Federation would be part of the collective. This story and the concepts are mine, feel free to use then if you give me credit.  
  
  
  
Resistance is Futile: Enemy Within  
  
Or, Everything You Wanted to Know About the Borg but Were Afraid to be Assimilated  
  
  
  
  
  
VWEEE VWEEE VWEEE VWEEE  
  
At the piercing sound, crewmember Flite snapped awake. He tossed the sheets aside, practically leaping for the door to the corridor. His frantic thoughts raced, "battle alarm? But there's nothing in this sector except."  
  
"This is the captain, all crew to battle stations, two Borg cubes are closing and will."  
  
"WE ARE THE BORG, LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND PREPARE TO BE ASSIMILATED, WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVNESS TO OUR OWN. WE ARE THE BORG, LOWER YOUR SHIELDS."  
  
'By the Creator, must we listen to that horrible sound' he prayed as he ran to his duty station. 'At least they haven't said that resistance is futile.'  
  
"WE HAVE ANALYZED YOUR DEFENSIVE CAPABILITY AND DETERMINED THAT IT IS INFERIOR, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. WE ARE THE BORG, LOWER YOUR SHIELDS."  
  
Clearly demonstrating that the universe doesn't like Crewmember Flite, he reached his duty station. And found it occupied.  
  
"BORG!" His scream brought an unexpected response.  
  
"Ghaa, real detective work, urk, Flite."  
  
Flite wrenched his horrified gaze from the monstrous black form to the smaller figure being held in the mechanical grasp above the deck. Normally Flite would have been amused by the colors his supervisor was changing to from the grip on his windpipe. Only horror and fear were in charge as he saw his supervisor thrashing as his color changed to a most unamusing gray.  
  
A soft clatter distracted him long enough to notice the needler that had been kicked to his feet, its strong red display indicating full charge. Reactions kicked in, and Flite found himself pouring an almost continuous stream of blue energy into the dark figure before him.  
  
Only to have it stopped by the clear green panels of the Borg's shield. Beyond panic, he continued firing. Moments later the green grew and started to vibrate at the shields started to overload. Then, having reassessed Flite as a threat, the borg let its captive fall to turn and deal with the threat.  
  
With detached calm, Flite saw his body advance, thrusting the point of the needler through the Borg's shield, scattering sparks in the process. Lodging it between plates in the abdominal armor, he fired.  
  
He didn't stop until its body stopped sparking and dark fluids from the body had stained his shoes. Gasping, he fought back the returning panic. Jerking back, unaware of the tearing sound, he fled. Stumbling through the corridors, he dimly saw dark figures moving as lights pierced the smoke that filled the halls. Even the screams and cries of the injured were muted. Escape had become his only thought.  
  
A fifteen-second eternity later, the closing hatch of the escape pod ended all thoughts of flight as his overstressed body took the only option available to it. Sleep. Darkness took him from all awareness of his body even the two wounds on his forearm like something had been jerked from his flesh.  
  
**************************************  
  
Inside his body, several thousand Borg nanoprobes activated. Cut off from the command network, they reverted to their default function.  
  
Assimilation.  
  
Reduced carbon, in the form of simple sugars, gave op electrons as they impacted sites on the nanoprobes hull. At other sites, oxygen absorbed electrons. Current flowed, and the nanoprobes went to work.  
  
Most of the nanoprobes had entered the bloodstream, and quickly diffused until their signals with each other were lost. Without other nanoprobes, each had only one reaction.  
  
Replication.  
  
Each inflated, unfolding to expose catalytic surfaces, a nanoscopic factory guided by the unwinding of the solid state memory coiled in quadruplicate in each of the four symmetrical segments. Each segment drew matter in, broke it down and started building. The new segments shoved the old ones apart, causing the nanoprobe to open like a flower until it split. One became two became four became eight became legion.  
  
Some, not too far gone into that cycle of replication drifted into the cell of the host. Then the replication took a different turn. Instead of building more nanoprobes, it injected a copy of its solid state memory and the assembly mechanism.  
  
In minutes, tiny patches of the blood vessels had started to form an insulating barrier and were pouring alien materials into the blood. As the concentration of these materials grew, more and more nanoprobes stopped using sugar and oxygen in favor of the pure current the blood now carried. And their work accelerated, doubling and redoubling the numbers of nanoprobes.  
  
All this time, each nanoprobe had tried to 'talk' to the others, using signals that only reached microscopic distances. As their numbers grew, more and more 'conversations' were held and started interfering with each other. In response, each segment of each nanoprobe changed frequency, eventually forming four connections with four other nanoprobes. As each one established that fourth channel, it stopped replicating. The nanoprobes refolded back into their more compact form, triggering the next phase.  
  
Networking.  
  
The newly refolded nanoprobes latched onto the tissues of the host and begin burrowing through the host's flesh. As they dig, the lay behind long coiled strands of light conducting material. Each nanoprobe dug randomly, without plan or purpose, laying behind it its silken quadruple helix of fiber optic.  
  
Though random, they are not blind. When one nanoprobe senses another's silken line it engulfs it, linking it with its own limited circuitry. Similarly, the shifting magnetic fields produced by most nerves and muscles also attract the nanoprobes, and they too join the growing network that forms the nascent Borg.  
  
*******************************  
  
Flite twitched in his sleep. Into his dreamless slumber came sensations. A touch, a burn, freezing, tickles, and pain. Each lasted a moment at a time but every nerve in his body was firing, and it HURT. And the dreams, bizarre pieces of memory strung together in less order than even the weirdest dream before.  
  
But that was nothing compared to when the whispering began.  
  
He was most fortunate his sleep was merely disturbed rather than interrupted.  
  
*******************************  
  
The network learned. Piece by piece, useful connection were kept while useless connections were cut. The network rewired itself, connecting each piece smoothly and efficiently. As with the nanoprobe replication, it grew exponentially.  
  
Order emerged from chaos.  
  
In the most dense areas of the net, the nanoprobes began their last autonomous task. Near the entrance wound, above the left hip, and within the brain, the nanoprobes had built the most dense portions of the network. And there they began changing it. Stretching, folding, producing or degrading new materials, they worked from instruction without plan.  
  
Change, pause. Change, pause. "...g.r." Change, pause. "we A..." Again and again the adjusted the fibers. As the signal drew closer to the one ingrained in their very structure, they slowed, allowing the others to catch up. Until at last.  
  
"WE (T/a*y24.4532) ARE (E^=g6G-01) THE (8N*e[ttpI4.99001z]) BORG"  
  
The sub-space receiver was complete, download of Borg core commands began.  
  
As the core command echoed through the network, they carried instructions that could not fit in the original nanoprobes. This data was dispersed throughout the network and a cascade of changes followed in its wake. Nanoprobes integrated into the net roused themselves, transcribing the data into coils of solid state memory before building new structures from it. Throughout the network, new functions arose, power storage, data processing, sensors. And the wonder of Borg technology, an organic transporter/replicator. Crude, wasteful, and error prone it may be, but it worked. Guided by the new sensors, it transported metals and silicates to first reinforce itself. Accepted results were installed while rejected replications were dissolved to provide material for the other nanoprobes to work with. Each successful replication boosted the accuracy and range that it could work at.  
  
Before it could complete the upgrade, sensors informed the net that the body's resources were approaching dangerous levels. The nanoprobes' frantic building had cost a great deal of energy and a new source was needed to supplement the biological. Fortunately, there was an energy source nearby as well as a larger source further away. All that was needed was to replicate the connections.  
  
*******************************  
  
What was once crewmember Flite opened its eyes and sat up. It reached for the needler, some portion of its mind wondering about the connection between hunger and the needler. Cracking the case, it extracted the power cell and pressed it into the flesh of its abdomen. Once the power cell had adhered, the former Flite stood and began examining the contents on the escape pod.  
  
'I had better CONTACT BORG COLLECTIVE, if I'm going to be rescued.'  
  
Activating a distress beacon, it paused, listening. 'That sounds like the INCORRECT FREQUENCY, I had better REMODULATE TO 6700 KILOPIPS.'  
  
Relieved at finding the solution, it easily tore the thick metal protecting the beacon's circuitry away. Looking at the tangle of wires it ACCESSED SUBSPACE BEACON SCHEMATICS. After a moment, it pulled a single wire before pausing, lost. Scratching an itch, its hand came back holding a small starburst of metal.  
  
Bringing the torn wire to the starburst, it watched as one ray coiled to join the two pieces before jamming it back into the tangle around the beacon.  
  
A moment later Borg drone 1 of 1, quartinary adjunct to unimatrix 083, turned to examine the pod's interior. It gave no sign as its left eye was pierced from within by a circle of metal spikes. Unfolding, they released a small wave of fluid to spill across one pale cheek. The tattered remains of the eye were quickly covered as the device expanded into a shallow black parabolic dish that covered the eye socket.  
  
Moving its head, 1 of 1 traced out the power lines and integrated components of the escape pod. That those were behind a layer of solid titanium composite was irrelevant.  
  
******************************  
  
Flite's story, his memory, sped across subspace. Carefully gathered, and recorded in minute detail, everything that defined him as an individual was now stored in the memory of the collective. Each experience, each sensation of his life was examined in minute detail.  
  
And then deemed irrelevant.  
  
Drone 1 of 1, however, had potential. It was entering a region of space that the Borg had only observed with long range sensors. The signal from 1 of 1 was still strong and the reward was worth the possible loss of a single drone.  
  
  
  
  
  
After a long absence from recreational writing, I return with this short piece about one of the most botched up villains in ST. According to what little official material I could find, THEY DON'T WORK. So I remade the Borg using what I know could work.  
  
If you can read this, you already read this fic. Please review. 


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